K-ON! Anime Legends

Guest Author - Lesley Aeschliman

K-ON! Anime Legends is a four-disc DVD box set that includes the 12 episodes of the main series, as well as two "extra episodes." When Bandai Entertainment released this box set, all they did was take the four individually released DVDs and put them together into one box set. The first two discs contain four episodes and bonus features, while the third and fourth discs contain three episodes and bonus features. For the episodes, you can watch either the English dub, or you can watch with Japanese audio and English subtitles.

K-ON! begins with four girls at Sakuragaoka Girl's High School joining the Light Music Club in order to save the group from being disbanded. Ritsu Tainaka is the self-proclaimed president of the club, and she plays the drums. She has an upbeat personality, but has a problem with remembering club activities. Mio is the bass player, and she's Ritsu's best friend; she is forced to join the club by Ritsu at the beginning of the series. Mio has a fear of being in the spotlight and is embarrassed easily. Tsumugi Kotobuki is a wealthy girl with a sweet personality, and she plays keyboards.

The last member to join the Light Music Club is Yui Hirasawa. She's a clumsy girl, gets distracted easily, and doesn't know how to play an instrument when she first joins the club. The other girls keep her, since the minimum number of members a school club needs to continue is four. At the beginning of the series, the others attempt to teach Yui how to play the guitar, but it's a feat that seems to be easier said than done.

As the series progresses, it's brought to their attention that an advisor is needed; luckily, they are able to find a teacher to fill this role in order to keep the club going. The next school year, a new underclassman named Azusa Nakano joins the club; she's another guitarist, and she's been playing the guitar since the fourth grade. Shortly after Azusa joins, the band finally gets a name.

Unfortunately, K-ON! isnít a very realistic show. Things happen a little too easily for the characters, and it also requires the viewer to use a "willing suspension of disbelief." One of the most unbelievable things for me was the fact that Yui seemed to learn how to play the guitar rather easily, but then just as easily forgets the things she's learned. K-ON! isn't bad for what it's trying to accomplish, and it seems to have captured its primary demographic (which, in my opinion, is teenage girls). However, this isn't a series that I'm personally going to rush out and add to my own home video collection.

When it comes to the DVD set itself, the bonus features seem to follow a pattern. Over the course of the four discs, there are interviews with the four main voice actors: Stephanie Sheh, Cristina Vee, Cassandra Lee, and Shelby Lindley. These interviews run anywhere from six to ten minutes in length, and they all are conducted the same way. The question is shown on the screen, and then it cuts to the voice actor sitting in the studio, responding to the question that appeared on the screen.

Three of the discs also had English language music videos for the songs: "Fuwa Fuwa Time," "My Love Is a Stapler," and "Brush Pen, Ballpoint Pen." Instead of simply using the performance of the song that appeared in the series, new music videos were edited together with existing footage from the series. All four discs also had trailers for The Girl Who Leap Through Space, Tales of the Abyss, and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Each disc also had DVD Credits included in the "Extras" menu.

If youíre a K-ON! fan that didn't purchase the individual DVDs when they were released, then this set would be worth purchasing in order to add the first season of the series to your home video collection. Unfortunately, when Bandai released the first season of K-ON! in a box set, they only released a DVD box set. If you want the first season on Blu-ray, you would still have to buy the four individual Blu-ray releases.

I wrote this review after watching a copy of this DVD box set that I checked out through the King County Library System.